


Just a Feeling

by TheColorBlue



Series: Those Who Use the Force [1]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-18
Updated: 2016-02-02
Packaged: 2018-05-14 17:30:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5751991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheColorBlue/pseuds/TheColorBlue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If anyone had asked Poe Dameron if he was religious, he might have joked that he grew up with a Force-sensitive tree in his backyard on Yavin 4, but also that might have meant nothing at all, really. Or anything. Or something.</p><p>A series of stories about Poe Dameron and Finn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Lake Part 1

If anyone had asked Poe Dameron if he was religious, he might have joked that he grew up with a Force-sensitive tree in his backyard on Yavin 4, but also that might have meant nothing at all, really. Or anything. Or something. 

Finn’s brow bunched up a little in thought and he said, “Look, the First Order may not have wanted us boots on the ground to get too independent, but we did—we had stories. We had ideals. Maybe not the kind of ideals that most people in the universe would be pushing around, but the Jedi and the Sith kind of had the same roots, didn’t they? It’s the same Force however you look at it, even if it’s from another angle and you’re using it differently.”

They were puttering around a lake not far from the Resistance Base. Off-duty and all of that. Finn was still recovering from his run-in with Kylo Ren, taking it easy. Poe had been grounded too. The General had given her commendation for his part in Starkiller Base’s destruction, and then in the same breath put him on leave until he’d been cleared by medical proper. She’d looked at him maybe the way his mother would have, so Poe hadn’t said anything in argument no Ma’am, not that he would have either way, he didn’t get to be the Resistance’s finest pilot by back-talking his commanding officers. 

Poe pulled off his boots and then he pulled off his shoes and then he stuck his toes in the water. 

Finn sat on a rock and looked out at the view and it might have been a bit of happiness and wistfulness both on his face. 

He looked like a kid.

He really did. 

Barely into his twenties.

Poe felt awfully old, right then. 

He felt old and tired and grey-hairs probably coming out already, and 

“I never thought I’d ever see a real Jedi,” Finn said, happy and proud and wistful. “I mean, I know she’s still in training and what not, but she’s the real deal, Rey is. Anybody could tell it just by looking at her. There’s something of it in her face: strong but peaceful but also searching. Like she’s looking for something. She’s amazing. It’s too obvious.” 

Poe wiggled his toes over gravel digging into his feet. 

If you had asked Poe if he was religious, he wouldn’t have known what to say, and that would have been a lie, one hundred percent. 

Sometimes he thought to himself, he just had a feeling about things. 

About flying: letting go of everything in his head and feeling this kind of peace kind of percolate through him, knowing in his bones exactly where to go or what to do, like the X-Wing was just an extension of his body, and the fabric of space an extension beyond that, and all the astral bodies. 

About people, too: having that gut sensation and always knowing who he’d get along best with among the new recruits as soon as he saw them, or who’d be at a bit more distance, or who were the bad eggs entirely. 

About Finn: looking at this guy’s face for this first time, even souped up on mind-torture and plain torture-torture, blood on his face at looking at Finn who’s sweating from having the helmet and also probably exhilaration and fear too and Poe thought to himself

this guy is going to be important. 

He didn’t think too hard about the press of ‘to me’ (important to me) but it was there too, a weird, warm undercurrent and 

Then there had been the day that he saw Finn again, that day on D’Qar, that day they blew up Starkiller Base, and Finn had come running and he smelled awfully nice and, well, he looked awfully nice wearing Poe’s jacket and Poe had bit his lip and just given him the damn thing, looked nicer on the other guy anyway (looked awfully romantic, was what he didn’t think about, all the time, every time he looked at Finn wearing it)

and Poe glanced back over at Finn, who’d pulled out a sandwich from the bag Poe had carried along, picnic by the lake, all of that silly romantic fluff while Finn waxed on happily about how amazing Rey was and Poe felt very old, like a creaky old man with motives of questionable morality, and he rolled up his pants and waded out a little farther into the water, like maybe putting a couple more feet between him and Finn would make up for Poe practically luring Finn out to lakeside picnics of dubious intention.

“Hey,” Finn called out, mouth full of sandwich, “Poe, where you going?” 

Poe wasn’t going anywhere. 

The stones of the lake bed were a bit bigger out here, but still digging into his feet. 

Finn had gotten down from his rock. 

Poe wiped at his eyes. 

General Organa probably had been onto something when she had him grounded. 

Maybe being Force-sensitive. 

Maybe being just a very astute lady who was also very tired and very sad, and Poe just felt very tired and old and crumbly inside. The world suddenly felt like a very big, sad place with nothing much for Poe in it, and he felt awfully sad, now that one fight was over, the next soon to begin. 

And now Finn had thrown off his boots too and was wading in. Poe could hear the other guy splash splashing in until he was right alongside. Finn came round to look very closely at Poe’s face. 

“Poe,” he said, getting up too close.

“Finn,” Poe did not squeak back. 

When Finn kissed Poe, it tasted like sandwiches. 

And when Finn pulled back, Poe asked, automatically, like an idiot, his voice gone all high, “What was that for?” 

Finn laughed.

He looked embarrassed.

But also like he wasn’t going to step away.

He looked at Poe, in a kind of open way, and said, “You looked like you needed it, I guess.” 

Then let Poe sling his arm around Finn's shoulders, all natural-like, the way they’d met again on D’Qar, the way they’d run up to each other like they’d known each other their entire lives.

Just a feeling.


	2. The Lake Part 2

Every morning, Poe and Finn would go out to the lake and Finn would swim a little bit, as part of his physical therapy, and Poe would meditate. Being an X-Wing pilot wasn’t necessarily conducive to having time to meditate on the regular, but Luke Skywalker had been a family friend. When he came visiting, he’d sit with Poe under the tree in the yard and they’d meditate. 

Six-year-old Poe had wanted to know why he had to learn meditation when he wasn’t going to grow up to be a Jedi, but Luke had bent down, mussed up his hair a bit, laughing, and said, “Everyone benefits from tuning themselves closer to the Force. You benefit for yourself, and your family benefits, and also your entire community. Your galaxy. All the stars and the planets.”

At thirty-three, Poe still didn’t think he was much good at it, but he meditated anyway, when he could. A bit more, lately, with time on his hands. It helped. He thought sometimes he would have gone a hundred times crazier with the post-traumatic, after Kylo Ren, if he hadn’t meditated, if he didn’t do it now. Building up the muscles. Tuning the muscles of his mind. All of his life doing it, with a childhood beneath the shadow of a tree like the tuning fork he set the vibrations of his mind towards.

“Anyway, that’s what Luke always said,” Poe said, looking at Finn looking back at him, Finn sitting on the gravel and who had been peering into Poe’s face when Poe had opened his eyes, Finn’s face kind of scrunched up a little like he wasn’t sure what he was looking at. He’d toweled off from his swim, clothes on now, his hair still damp from the water. 

“Are you sure you’re not trying to become a Jedi?” Finn asked, maybe a little accusingly. Like asking if Poe was going to hop into his X-Wing at any moment and fly away to another planet, where Rey was. 

Poe joked, “Well, talking about me, what about you? The lightsaber prodigy, holding his own against Kylo Ren.” 

Finn just frowned at Poe. “You don’t need to be Jedi to wave around a lighted stick,” he said. “I heard Han Solo used a lightsaber once, and look the guy was pretty cool, but also kind of the opposite of Jedi material as far as I could see it, but I’m just some former Stormtrooper, what do I know.” 

“Plenty,” Poe said, automatically. “You know plenty.” The impulse in him was to reach out towards Finn. An affectionate touch. A hand to the other man’s shoulder. He aborted the gesture, but Finn was kind of looking at Poe’s hand, frowning still, like he’d noticed anyway. 

“You like Rey, don’t you?” Poe asked then, uncertainly.

Finn snorted. “‘Course I like Rey, she’s amazing, I adore her; but that’s not what you’re asking is it?” 

Poe admitted, “Well, no.”

Finn looked away for a moment. He said, “Well, she’s going to be a Jedi, isn’t she? They don’t normally do the entire relationship thing, do they?” 

“Not that I know of.” 

Luke had never married. 

There had always been something about him, like the ether. 

Like everything else sort of naturally fell away, if you were that kind of person, that very specific kind of person, your whole being kind of becoming like the morning light. 

“You know what Rey said to me, the other day on the holovid,” Finn said. “She said, Luke told her he went away because he realized after Kylo Ren, he wasn’t ready. He wasn’t mature enough. He didn’t know how to help Ben Solo, but he wanted to be ready for Rey. So he’d gone looking for that Jedi temple. Some kind of journey. The kind of thing a person can only do when it’s only themselves they’re living with. But now he said he was ready for Rey reaching out to him, him coming back too. Rey said he’s going to train her, and then they’ll be back. But she doesn’t know when that is.”

Poe was quiet. 

Feeling something like sadness in the air around them. 

Finn said, “And you know, maybe I’m just some dumb former Stormtrooper, but I think to myself, I don’t need doing that to myself. Waiting for someone who may never come back. Heck, she never said that she was interested in me that way. Maybe I could have told her, but it just seemed like the wrong time. She looked… happy.” He paused, and then looked back over at Poe. He was quiet, before saying, “And then one day, I guess. I looked at you and realized. You weren’t.”

“That’s,” Poe began. His voice feeling like it was getting caught in his throat. Strangled a little. “You shouldn’t, just because of that—”

“It wasn’t just because anything,” Finn said, rolling his eyes. “I’m saying,” and now he was getting awfully close to Poe, “maybe this is the right thing, for right now. Even when someone else isn’t.” 

He kissed Poe again on the mouth.

“That was all right, wasn’t it?” Finn asked, after he’d pulled back. Frowning now uncertainly. “You’re—this is okay, right?” 

Poe kissed him back. 

“You know you’re amazing, right?” Finn asked. Later. The two of them sitting together by the lake, eating their breakfasts, watching the way the morning light lit up the sky. “Sitting out on rocks on the morning. Meditating. Being the Resistance’s best pilot. Being the nicest guy ever, everyone says it. BB-8 adoring you. …Uh, the little guy isn’t going to be stabbing me in the leg or anything for, uh, all of this, is it—”

“BB-8 doesn’t stab the people I care about,” Poe said. 

And then stupidly, blushed. 

But Finn just looked happy. 

They finished breakfast together.


	3. The Jacket

They were lying in bed. Early afternoon. Sex, and then drowsing happily afterwards, a siesta, but now Finn was awake. He was awake and he was pretty sure that Poe was awake.

Finn rolled over onto one elbow and then whispered at Poe, “Are we ever going to talk about it?”

“About what?” Poe said, his face mostly muffled by pillow, sounding comfortable and lazy.

“Your jacket. When you gave it to me.”

Poe made a weird noise into his pillow and then turned his head to look at Finn sideways. He was definitely awake now. “I just let you fuck me up the ass into this bed, have mercy.”

“Let me, you were pretty much begging for it,” Finn said, earnest and laughing and argumentative, and Poe smiled a quick, laughing little smile too without making a sound, and then rolled over onto his other side, pulling the sheet up like he was trying to burrow in deeper and Finn grabbed the other man and manhandled him back round to look at him. Finn was a lot stronger in the arms than Poe, especially now with him well on the way to recovery. It might have had something to do with being a former Stormtrooper. Or maybe he would have been stronger either way.

Finn looked at Poe and Poe looked back at Finn.

Poe asked, “I don’t know, what is there even to tell you, isn’t it obvious by now?”

“Jessika said you loved that jacket. You’ve had it for years.”

“Hmm. Damn the lady.”

“You barely knew me,” Finn said. “I want to hear why.”

“It really does suit you.”

“Come on, Poe.”

“It does,” Poe repeated. “Anyway.” He worried at his lip, the way he sometimes did. Finn kissed him. He couldn’t resist. Poe grinned at him when Finn had pulled away. That pleased look. Like he still couldn’t barely believe he really had Finn in that way. 

“You were saying?” Finn asked. 

“Persistent aren’t you.”

“Poe.”

“I was thinking about how it was the first non-issue article of clothing you’d probably ever worn. That’s true isn’t it?”

“ _Well_.”

“Right, so. I gave you a name, I gave you clothes. It felt like. You know. Do stormtroopers have children’s stories?”

“Poe, is there a point you’re trying to get at.”

“That’s what I mean. It’s like, you know, kid’s stories. Folk stories. Once, in a galaxy far away, on a distant planet, there was… oh, you know. Something about taming wild, fantastic creatures. Transforming people, metaphorically. Giving them a name, and clothes, and they’re… yours, in a way, tied to you.” Poe thought about it and said. “Luke Skywalker always told me a lot of stories. My mom and dad were kind of more literal, practical-minded, they didn’t even tell stories about themselves, I had to find that out from reading up on it myself, but Luke brought back stories from all over the galaxy.”

“Huh.” Finn said. Not quite understanding still, but then he thought of something else. “Rey told me a story too,” he said. “She said, once, in a galaxy far away, there was a girl who lived in a fortress in a desert. Her mother put her there because she loved her and was protecting her. And that’s why she never left until one day a prince from another planet found her. And even then she didn’t want to leave, because family came first. I think she was trying to explain why she had to go back to Jakku, but I think she’s since changed her mind.” Then Finn said, “You were trying to make me yours, huh?”

“Don’t read so much into it,” Poe said, his face all red. Pretty undignified for a thirty-three year-old Resistance pilot. “Maybe, a little. But also. I liked seeing you in it. It was nice.” Blushing hard. Looking at the bed instead of Finn. 

He stopped being so embarrassed when Finn started kissing him again. 

And they were still kissing when BB-8 opened the door and rolled in and started beeping at them shrilly. 

Poe broke away to yell at BB-8, “Yes, yes, you little monster, I know I’ve still got reports to be finished today, get out and I’ll be ready in fifteen.”

More shrill beeping.

“Fine, ten, now skidaddle.” 

BB-8 rolled back out again.

Poe flopped back onto his pillow. Finn looked down at him.

“I’m not sure I deserve you,” Finn admitted. 

“Well I still can’t believe you didn’t jump into a ship first thing and fly off to proclaim your undying love to Rey, so that makes two of us.”

Finn frowned down at Poe. “You’re so dramatic.”

“A little.”

“And Rey’s busy. It’d have been a little pathetic and desperate, even for me.”

Poe reached up to lay a hand to Finn’s arm. A familiar touch. 

“Well, come on. Let me up before BB-8 rolls back in and sets the bed on fire.” 

“I don’t think it would,” Finn said, but sounding doubtful.

“Don’t test it, I’m afraid it’s been spending too much time around RD-D2 lately.”

Finn pulled back and let Poe get up.


	4. The Pilot

When Poe Dameron is captured, he sort of knows already that he’s a dead man. No one’s coming to save him. No one’s getting Poe Dameron out of this one, it’s what he signed up for. 

_“Do I talk first or you talk first? I talk first?”_

Words of a dead man walking. 

Eyes going wide and wondering as he sees the inside of the TIE fighter hangar. 

Last moments of a dead man walking. 

The torture is horrible.

He doesn’t want to die, he wants to live. 

Everything is horrible, but he still wants to live. 

So when FN-2187—when _Finn_ sidetracks him from the figurative executioner’s block, it’s kind of a miracle. When he sees the human face emerge from behind the Stormtrooper helmet, it’s a miracle. Someone alive is in there? It’s a miracle! And a human being too. He’s doing the right thing. He needs a pilot. He’s only a human. Poe is a great pilot. 

He can fly anything. 

— 

When he finds himself alive, ejected from the TIE fighter on the sands of Jakku, it feels like the cruelest irony. Finn. Where is Finn? Finn could be dead. Black smoke rising in the distance, over the sand dunes.  

On Jakku, it is very hot. It is very hot, and all the exposed skin of Poe feels like it’s getting burnt, angry red skin, all the parts he can’t protect, and under his clothes is drenched from sweating, and he’s so thirsty. He doesn’t feel like he’s dying, but it feels like he’s getting closer to it. Light-headed from food and water deprivation. His head aching. Hot sand scratching away at him. 

He’s sitting, probably dying, on a sand dune when the scavenger passes by, riding some local beast that stinks and snuffles at him. 

The alien scavenger hops down and prods at Poe with a stick. 

He looks him up and down. 

An unsettling feeling. 

“Where’s your speeder, my friend?”

Poe looks back up at the scavenger and says, with a barely lucid smile and a cracked voice, “Same place I am. Lost.”

“I am Naka Iit. A scavenger of sorts.” Iit again looks Poe carefully up and down. “I might just scavenge you.” 

This can’t be happening to Poe. 

He may have laughed, feeling weirdly like he wants to start crying instead. 

Horrible lose of the last bit of moisture in him. 

Finn is dead and BB-8 is gone and Poe feels like he is dying. 

He’s supposed to be strong, but mostly he feels like dying and he doesn’t want to die he wants to live, and when he smiles at the scavenger, it probably does not reach his eyes. 

“If you’re asking if you can fuck me, I’ll make it worth your while. All I want in return is access to communications off this planet.”

— 

Poe’s week has not been… great. 

When the Resistance gets him back, there’s no time to take a breather. BB-8 is on the move, somehow, and they have to retrieve him before the First Order does. 

That’s how he meets Finn. 

That’s how he meets Finn, on the tarmac of the D-Qar Resistance base, and it’s like a miracle. 

Finn is the reason he’s still alive.

Finn completed his mission.

Finn—

“I—that’s my jacket,” Poe says, staring down at it. 

Finn goes, “Oh, uh—“ and begins to take it off, but Poe grabs the collar of it and pulls it back on, “no no no no,” straightens it back out on Finn’s shoulders. “Keep it, it suits you.”

Looking at Finn, and feeling the flush in his cheeks. Biting his lip a little, feeling shy and wonderstruck, suddenly. 

He looks Finn in the eye.

“You’re a good man, Finn.”

So when Finn starts talking about Rey, later, it’s a little bit of a shock. 

Sort of the adoration in Finn’s voice, in his eyes. 

It’s petty, but Poe feels hurt.

It is truly petty. 

He puts it away, with the almost dying, and the torture, and Jakku, and the ‘he may very well die" again, killed in the battle of Starkiller Base. Flying like someone who wasn’t afraid of death, into the heart of all of that exploding machinery— 

He doesn’t think about anything else, because it’s not important. 

Until one day he has too. Sitting on the edge of a lake. 

Finn in the water. 

Poe watching him, feeling wistful with it. 

Alive, because he wanted to live.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -The bit with the scavenger comes [directly from the novelization](http://magickedteacup.tumblr.com/post/138244854859/shawarma-palace-im-not-saying-poe-fucked-an).  
> -[And in regards to the jacket.](http://magickedteacup.tumblr.com/post/138100542189/corvidthief-alright-this-is-important-business%22)  
> -[And some more about Poe](http://magickedteacup.tumblr.com/post/138007327849/actuallyalivingsaint-thescarletqueen).  
> -[Art that makes me think of this fic.](http://sara-wawa.tumblr.com/post/137997340698/so-i-was-wondering-if-poe-suffers-from-depression)


	5. Dinner for 2

Poe called in a couple of favors, borrowed a corner of the mess kitchen for about two hours that afternoon, and then set up a romantic dinner for two behind the flight barracks, using upturned crates and an artfully placed lantern over a makeshift tablecloth. He’d made a rich, red stew from Yavin 4, his mother always made it, with vegetables and chilis and a whole fowl and served with rice. 

Poe led Finn over, Poe feeling like a kid with his eyes shining all eager, and Finn sort of looked at it all and went, “wow. Poe, you didn’t have to,” and Poe sort of gushed something really idiotic like, “but babe I adore you.” 

Anyway.

In the past, the conversation had went like this:

“Poe,” Finn said patiently, “I get you think that I grew up in grim regimentation, but the food wasn’t bad. Decent, filling food was good for morale. You know, carrot and stick approaches?” 

And also, 

“Of course I know how to cook, everybody in training had mess hall rotations, along with janitorial rotations.” 

And,

“You know, to be honest, I don’t have a lot of clear memories before age 16? I think that’s normal for us Stormtroopers. I don’t think they recruit from kids earlier than age 3 or 4, because it impacts too much overall development; but hmm. After that, I guess I would say: I kind of remember camps. All of us running around. Practical field exercises, on different planets. Service exercises, to help rebuild the old empire and for propaganda purposes. But I’m not sure how much of that is actually remembering and how much is Captain Phasma telling us. And then after that, all of us are transferred to space facilities to complete our training.”

“Poe, why do you look so sad? It wasn’t bad. Well, I mean, up until I was deployed as a real soldier, but you know? It wasn’t bad, in fact a lot of the guys in my unit were pretty proud to be First Order, if anything I was the odd guy out. I never really fit in. I don’t remember a lot of it anyway.”

“Poe—“

Poe herded Finn onto one chair/up-turned crate, and then served out rice and stew, and then plopped onto the other chair/up-turned crate and then picked up his spoon too but mostly he was staring at Finn. Really watching him, enrapt. Then he finally noticed Finn was kind of looking at him funny back, so he started digging into his stew but he wasn’t really paying attention and some of it may have missed his mouth because he was looking at Finn. He was watching Finn. 

Finn took his first bite. 

“Oh, wow,” Finn said. “Wow, thanks Poe! This is delicious! I’ve never had anything like this before—thanks!” 

Poe watched Finn eat up every last bite in his bowl

And then immediately gave him a second serving. 

“Poe, you’re going to make me fat.”

“Shhh,” Poe said, “ _déjame cuidarte, te amo._ ”

“I have no idea what you just said, but same to you, I guess?” Finn said, laughing.

“I love you, Finn.”

“Oh. Oh! I love you too, Poe.” 

Dessert was fruit from off-planet.

Poe didn't much pay attention to that either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Corrected by bbarnes, Poe should be saying in Spanish "let me take care of you, I love you."  
> Poe's dish would be a Star Wars version of the Guatemalan stew "pepián."


End file.
